Build parking for car > car ownership went up > town become easily congested because of increased car ownership > politician bitch about non-private car infrastructure taking away from honest car driver > widening the lane > business gone down > road is congested few years later on anyway > speed is increased to make flow better > pedestrian dying left and right > town revenue decline because businesses left or shut > next generation of politician came in and fight for better town > town got a bit better > today.
What, you thought i’m narrating the future of this town?
The city I just left is almost through that entire arc. How did you guess the history of a city you’ve probably never looked at!?!
The latest wave of city council leadership is actively trying to build out more public transit and it’s amazing just how horrible people can be when you ask them to make a tiny percentage of the roads (often 3+ lanes wide in the city core) have a bike lane or even a few blocks of bus priority lane so the busses can arrive on time during rush hour.
At the same time it’s in the top 5 most dangerous cities for pedestrians in our state, but the mutilation of fellow city dwellers is okay as long as people can drive fast through downtown to get to the big box store 20+ miles away. Strangely, the City Council’s old members keep yelling about how the city downtown is dying because we added a few bike lanes and therefore people don’t want to be there since it’s harder to drive (but only during major rush hours).
It’s an island 14x8km size. You don’t need a car.
I know this will be a controversial take, but I live in a rural town where most houses are hundreds of years old, and like many European towns, car parking was obviously never considered during its construction. Not having a car is, unfortunately, not an option here for most, due to the town’s geographic location, rurality and public transport availability. If I want to take a train to a city here which is a 2 hour drive away, it’s a 5 hour journey during which I have to change trains in literally another country to get there.
That aside, because cars are - for the foreseeable future at least - essential here, everyone has one. And since the houses and roads weren’t constructed to accommodate parking, there are cars parked on roads and pavements everywhere. Some parking restrictions have come into place over the years to prevent obstructions, which has meant cars are often left wherever people can find a space. In my immediate area, most people have at least a 5 minute walk to their vehicle. This sounds acceptable, but there are a large number of elderly drivers that live in the town, which itself is extremely hilly, and is unhelpful for them.
New build estates are cropping up all around the town, and while not all of them have drives or parking spaces, most do, and it makes those areas considerably more accessible.
Yes, this will likely increase house prices, but locally that’s not the major factor. Around here it’s second-home owners that use them as holiday lets, or summer homes to escape from the city. A crackdown on that would have a far greater impact on local house prices without affecting accessibility for locals.
The linked article is about Jersey.
104.000 inhabitants on a rock in the ocean the size of 10km x 10 km, population density 859/km2.
That population density is not very different from many lower density neighbourhoods in big cities. On top, distances on this rock are never of that kind that a car would be absolutely necessary. They are, geographically and demographically, in an excellent position to organise very good public transportation with little more than a few well served, comfortable buslines. Vast majority of the population is clearly concentrated on one side of the island: the south, where population density is clearly higher (St Helier, 3,380/km2, really not different from average city density neighbourhoods in big cities.)
I don’t know where you live, but I don’t think “rural” and “long distances” are the right arguments for rooting in favor of more space for cars (and thus… more cars) on Jersey. The longest drive I could draw on a map is from “La Rocque” to “Grosnez castle”. And that’s really stretching it, with a staggering 22km in 30 minutes. Makes you wonder why they’ld have cars at all on this island… Maybe for construction, transporting the sick to the hospital etc etc. But your old regular commute from home to market or home to work… It could be a bicycle paradise an island like this… You can cycle the entire longest stretch in less than 1,5 hours, by foot it would be a staggering 5 hours. They are ruining their paradise island by roads and cars everywhere and encouraging it even further (obligating it, even) is just a god damn shame. One could perfectly live there without owning their own car in their own garage.
Yes, Jersey obviously has different geography, and I would absolutely take the locals’ opinion on what they’d prefer. This isn’t advocating for it on Jersey, rather a comment on my region, as invariably the holistic “fuck cars” perspective get applied everywhere and I don’t believe it’s ever that black and white.
That said, I’d still rather see Bergerac driving round in his Triumph than riding a bike 😜
So your reply to this article was very out of place. Things are not white or black, but your opinion was not at all about the article the OP posted and has little place here. Living on Jersey without your own garage is perfectly possible, the only issue they have is man-made (too much car infrastructure, too little alternatives) and obligating people to build expensive garages only makes it worse. Building decent cycle infrastructure and providing better public transportation are very viable options on Jersey. Your living place and your grievances about your living place don’t influence that.
I’m very sorry
This is a lot more than mildly infuriating, even as a non-brit.
Ground level parking isn’t really all that expensive, not unless you have very high land values. It does cost far more if you want to put up a multistory parking garage; from past reading, that’s maybe $30k-$50k per spot (though I’d still personally favor a parking mandate in that case, as otherwise you get people turning the street into a parking lot, which is awful for everyone, and parking illegally all over).
In the picture shown, though, it looks like townhouse-type stuff, two stories, not high density housing, so the land value probably isn’t that insane, and they can do ground level parking instead of multistory parking.
